On Marriage…

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. (ESV)
Ephesians 5:25-33.
The Scriptures are without a shadow of doubt, a great treasure. In fact, I make bold to say, “the greatest treasure of all”. As it is with all that is precious, it does not easily yield its bounties to us, we must not only desire to possess these bounties, we also must possess the right equipment to enable us mine the depths of God’s word.
Many strangely expect the Scriptures to yield itself to us of its own accord and are genuinely surprised at their ignorance when they are confronted with rightly exegeted Scriptural truths. Some even go as far as rejecting the obvious and would only, after much struggle with the truth, finally submit to its teachings.
To compound our problems, we live in a world that is opposed to truth and rejects every form of authority. Then we also have to contend with the Devil, who is opposed to truth and with our flesh which yields to Sin because it is fallen.
Bottom line is, there is nothing about natural man or his environment that makes him gravitate towards scriptures, let alone dig into the word to unearth its treasures.
Sadly though, many of us are oblivious of these impediments and we would just rather not rock the boat, or even settle for either a superficial understanding of Scriptural truth or choose the alternative which the world provides.
The world has a lot to say about the issues that we as Christians must tackle, most of the time, these worldly opinions are so plausible they are taken for granted as the truth, at other times, these opinions contain “enough” truth to pass muster with the less discerning Christians so that they not only embrace it, but they become proponents of such false views.
The Doctrine of Marriage ( What God’s word has to say about Marriage) is one of those really distorted teachings so much so that right now, many so-called Christian marriages are in trouble due largely to false and wordly expectations on the part of intending and new couples.
My desire for my brethren is that they all think biblically about marriage and are thus not only set free from the bonds of false and wordly expectations, but are in fact glorifying God through gospel driven, God-centered, Christ exalting Marriages.
To be continued…